HIGH Landing that new Break Blow animation. Yeah! Smack them in the face!
LOW As a value proposition, it’s clearly inferior to its predecessor in terms of content.
WTF Rachel and Momiji don’t make the cut but Raidou and Phase 4 do? Ugh.
HIGH Landing a well timed Power Blow that destroys the opponent—not to mention everyone and everything around them.
LOW Inconsistent netcode often leads to irritating online matches.
WTF Virtua Fighter characters made it into the series before Rachel and Momiji did? Seriously?
HIGH The responsive combat controls.
LOW The haphazard and awful excuse for a story mode.
WTF The sheer number of women getting backhanded.
Is Dead or Alive: Dimensions kiddy porn? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
The Dead or Alive series has never pretended to be anything but what it was. It featured nubile, scantily-clad women with entertaining breast physics that kicked and punched opponents across a fighting ring or stage. It was a game aimed squarely at young men and over the years it catered to that demographic to much success.
HIGH The volleyball's not horrible.
LOW Everything else.
WTF All this emphasis on skin, and you can't zoom in any further?
In the hierarchy of videogame fighting titles, Team Ninja's Dead or Alive series (DoA) has always languished somewhere near the middle of the pack. Known more for its jaw-dropping visuals, scantily-clad female combatants, and the phenomena of "breast physics" than its fighting engine, the games have always been looked down upon by fans of loftier fighting series like Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, and even Tekken. However, that hasn't stopped the franchise from developing a loyal following.
According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Violence, Sexual Themes, Partial Nudity
If the game were truly about volleyball, or even about forming relationships, then there would not be random screens of the girls walking up and down beaches or lying down in poses that make them appear, as a friend so aptly put it, "freshly raped."
Sex is something of an enigma for this country. Everyone wants it, everyone thinks about it, but almost nobody wants to deal with it in a meaningful and intelligent way. This is especially true for videogames and their delayed acceptance as culturally valid media.
I'll admit that I'm not much of a fan of fighting games on consoles. I usually spent my time playing the Street Fighters and Tekkens in arcades because I believe the experience of a fighting game is much more exciting when you're actually playing against a human opponent. Considering that most of the people I hang around don't really care for video games, it's been hard for me to ever have a good experience with a fighting game at home. I always end up convinced that the computer cheats and is out to get me (which aggravates me to no end).
Recent Comments